1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to ball retrievers and more particularly to an improved manually-operated, wheeled device for collecting and storing balls.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A ball of some type or another is used as the principal object of virtually every team or multiple player sports game currently being played. Good examples of this include football, baseball, basketball, golf and tennis.
When two or more players are actually playing one of the above-mentioned games, it is the usual case that very few balls are needed. For instance, in tennis it is customary to play with one can of three tennis balls. However, when a player wishes to practice a game on his own, a great many balls are often employed. For example, golfers go to driving ranges and hit full buckets of golf balls and tennis players go to tennis courts to practice their serves with a basketful of balls.
Also, professional instructors often employ a great number of balls when teaching their sport. In tennis, it is common for an instructor to take ball after ball out of a basket and toss them to one or more of his students so that they may practice a particular stroke under his supervision.
A nuisance created by using a number of balls to practice is that eventually someone has to go to the trouble of picking them up. This can be a long and tiresome job, particularly after a hard, athletic workout. Furthermore, for a professional instructor, the time spent gathering balls is a waste of money as well as time because he could be using that same time to instruct other students.
In recognition of this need for a means for rapidly retrieving and storing balls, a number of prior art devices have been developed. For example, in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,593,868 to G. Folz, a device is disclosed which includes a brush element that sweeps balls gathered by a cooperating pair of scoop members into a receiving basket. A number of other special purpose members are also included in Folz's device to perform such functions as dislodging balls from corners or from against wall surfaces.
Folz's tennis ball retriever is a relatively mechanically complex device and has many moving and rotating parts to wear, malfunction and work out of adjustment. At the other extreme, the device disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,371,950 to K. Stap is a simple, basket-like ball container including a plurality of rods forming the container's base, the rods being disposed in parallel and separated by a distance slightly less than the diameter of a tennis ball. When the base of the basket is pushed onto a tennis ball, the ball is forced through adjacent rods of the base into the container where they are retained for future use. While Stap's invention is mechanically quite simple, it does not pick up tennis balls anywhere near as fast as Folz's device.
In summary, the prior art discloses at one extreme a device which is capable of quickly picking up balls but which is mechanically complex and, at the other extreme, a device which is mechanically simple but picks up balls relatively slowly. The problem that the prior art has not solved, then, is how to produce a mechanically simple ball collecting and storing device which also collects balls efficiently and rapidly.
Applicant also wishes to make of record the following patents which disclose prior art ball retrieving storage devices, none of which address the above-stated problem: U.S. Pat. No. 3,926,465 of A. Hoherland, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 3,902,749 of L. Falitz; U.S. Pat. No. 3,485,398 of M. Offner; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,996 of T. Campbell.